Dev Workshop: Endless Kuva Survival & Kuva Guardian Changes!

[corpuskiller20 2,505]

Greetings, Kuva-thirsty Tenno!

Since The War Within launch on November 11th, 2016, Tenno have been introduced to the continually roaming Kuva Fortress. But contrary to its name, no Kuva can be acquired directly from Kuva Fortress missions. Instead, Kuva Siphon/Flood missions on nearby Planets are what offer that delicious Kuva if completed accurately. 

Kuva is a unique Resource with a particular acquisition method, and we want to make sure the addition of Kuva to the Fortress followed that design intent, while offering players a much requested avenue to acquire it outside of the Siphon/Flood mechanic. 

Our solution comes in the form of a permanent Endless Kuva Survival mode on Taveuni in the Kuva Fortress! This mission will start out like any other Survival mission, but now with a twist! 

Marked enemies will drop something new: Kuva Catalysts.
*Developer note: A Kuva Catalyst carrying enemy will spawn per Life Support tower as either an Eximus or Kuva Guardian. 

Picking up this Kuva Catalyst and simply walking up to an unactivated Life Support Tower, transforms the Life Support Tower into a Kuva Harvester. Now you must protect this Kuva Harvester for 1 minute (as indicated on your UI) as enemies will now logically and forcefully attempt to destroy it. If they succeed in destroying the Kuva Harvester, you will lose out on both Kuva and the Life Support Tower - they don’t mess around with their Kuva!

Once the Kuva Harvester is complete, you can grab your successfully earned 200 Kuva from the completed Kuva Harvester. Completed Kuva Harvesters also give a small percentage of Life Support to aid in your literal Survival. 
*Developer note: Deciding to make the Kuva be a physical Koolaid bottle-looking drop allows for Resource Boosters and Smeeta Kavats Charm to apply! 

*Please ignore the Clem transmission in place of new Lotus transmissions for completing a Kuva Harvester

The design intent and goal for Kuva Survival is for players, both Public and Solo, to balance risk and reward as they sacrifice their Life Support Towers for precious Kuva. Carefully managing available Life Support Towers and Life Support dropped by enemies becomes increasingly important in order to obtain as much desired Kuva possible. 

You can see the original work-in-progress version from Devstream #108 here:
https://clips.twitch.tv/HelpfulFragileLapwingTwitchRaid 

FAQ from Devstream #108:

• 200 Kuva is awarded per Kuva Harvester- this value is still subject to change with continued testing/feedback. Considering the Endless Survival aspect, this number will allow Kuva Survival to sit in the middle between Kuva Siphon and Kuva Flood in regards to the amount of Kuva rewarded. Tenno who want a quicker Kuva routine can still play Siphon or Flood missions, but those who want to acquire this Resource via familiar gameplay (with a twist) can jump into an Endless Kuva Survival! 
• Kuva awarded per successful Kuva Harvester does not increase as the Endless Survival mission progresses. Our intent is for Kuva Survival to mimic the mechanic of Excavation/Defense with the intensity of Survival.
• Kuva Guardians and Kuva Jesters (as seen on Devstream #108) also have a chance of spawning. These enemies add to the twisted variety for Kuva Survival, and gives you a place outside of Siphon/Flood to fight them. Plus, these enemies have been conspicuously missing from the Kuva Fortress....

Kuva Fortress Survival Improvements:

• Removed cramped and maze-like Kuva Fortress tiles that felt unsuitable for an Endless Survival with an Excavation/Defense twist.
• Added a repurposed Fortress Defense tile to Kuva Fortress Survival with improved enemy navigation and traversible areas. 

!!NEW!! Kuva Guardian Changes:
In light of all these changes surrounding Kuva, we felt it necessary to make improvement tweaks to the Kuva Guardians (or onion babies as Megan likes to call them). When faced outside of The War Within quest, their mechanic required to turn them vulnerable has been met with some confusion.

As an overall change, Kuva Guardians are now easier to turn vulnerable, but will become tougher to kill once they are. 

Previously vulnerability flow was: 

• Operator Void Blast to stun, then Void Dash when stunned to disarm their Kesheg and turn vulnerable.

NEW vulnerability flow:

• No stun state required. Operator Void Blast OR Void Dash to disarm their Kesheg and turn vulnerable.

General Kuva Guardian Changes:

• Increased base Health from 300 to 400.
• Slightly increased the Fire Rate of their Twin Rogga .
• Guardian Health type is now in line with the rest of Grineer.
  • Weaker against Heat and Viral but more resistant to Gas.
• Added a red glow around the Kuva Guardian to depict when it is invulnerable.

Please keep in mind that everything you read/see in this Dev Workshop is subject to change as we continue testing and reading feedback up until launch. 

We hope to ship this as early as next week, but we of course welcome your constructive feedback and suggestions!

[Blade_Wolf_16 2,746]

Finaly, the Kuva Workshop!!!

Hmm.... wait, now is not the time t be happy. There are many things that feel wrong in there.

What I mean by that is scaling. The Hp of the Harvester and the amount of Kuva doesn't scale? Why? 200 Kuva for protecting something as weak as an Extractor while losing Life Support doesn't seem that rewarding. If it takes 3 Life Support to get as much as a simple Siphon, I can tell that nobody will be doing long runs of this. Enemies scale, so the reward should too. The reward has to be worth the risks the same way Survival/Defenses/Interceptions/Defections/etc. should  *wink* *wink*.

If people are good enough to run a 1-2 hour survival while wasting Life Support, the reward should be just as good. 3 Siphons can give between ~1500 and 1800 kuva, but it would take at least 8 of these to get that amount and the only thing we know is that it takes one minute to harvest. We don't know how much time it would take to start a new one (enemy has to spawn, get killed, pick up the thing, get to the Life Support), so my first guess is that, with the current stats, Siphons/Floods would still be a lot more effective for Kuva Farming. Maybe not as fun and challenging, but by looking at how people cheese everything mindlessly to maximise time/reward, I think I know what's gonna be the most popular method.

Edited March 22, 2018 by Blade_Wolf_16

[DrBorris 9,920]

Please consider having the Kuva amount scale with time in mission or the amount of kuva siphons completed. As it stands there is no reason to run it as an "endless" mission or a reason to test our gear. It will just be more practical to stay for 10 min and leave to restart which goes against the big reason as to why so many of us want endless Kuva.

 

Edit: There already exists quick missions for farming Kuva, with this addition Kuva Survival will not be much different. I understand that it is just mimicking the existing drops of Survival, Excavation and Defense, but those missions already have this issue. Having scaling rewards with endless fissure missions was a awesome addition and seeing something similar with Kuva Survival would be great.

Edited March 22, 2018 by DrBorris

[Putcher 147]

yes endless kuva here i come.Im sure the kuva from each lifesupport will be increased so im very happy about this update

Edited March 22, 2018 by Putcher

[Shiditso 92]

Looks like a good fix, awesome!

Edited March 22, 2018 by Shiditso

[Bondrewd_The_Novel 2,983]

i know the value of kuva is still subject to change and all
but i do hope it does change because the game is 4:45 minutes in and only get 200 kuva
that is bit painfull you can run most kuva missions in that time limit and get 600+ kuva a run
so unless you get a lot of life support + kuva catalyst drops i don't really see the point in a endless kuva mission

Edited March 22, 2018 by N7-CommanderShepard

[Jugg45naut 89]

Please consider to increase the amount Kuva awarded to player for every 5 minutes run. As the enemies grow stronger with time. Thank you DE

[Guest]

Question: Does a resource booster double the amount of kuva dropped?

[Latiac 3,605]

200 kuva per tower?

While this is a step in the right direction I still think it seems a little slow, For the time we could do in this survival we could earn more in Kuva Siphons.

Are these going to monitored and changed potentially?

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Latiac said:

200 kuva per tower?

While this is a step in the right direction I still think it seems a little slow, For the time we could do in this survival we could earn more in Kuva Siphons.

Are these going to monitored and changed potentially?

 

21 minutes ago, [DE]Sheldon said:

Please keep in mind that everything you read/see in this Dev Workshop is subject to change as we continue testing and reading feedback up until launch. 

We hope to ship this as early as next week, but we of course welcome your constructive feedback and suggestions!

 

[CelestialStorm 69]

18 minutes ago, [DE]Sheldon said:

Kuva awarded per successful Kuva Harvester does not increase as the Endless Survival mission progresses. Our intent is for Kuva Survival to mimic the mechanic of Excavation/Defense with the intensity of Survival.

 

How would the kuva reward scaling get in the way of mimicing the mechanics of "Excavation / Defense with the intensity of Survival?"

I think lowering the base kuva value and making it so it scales off of how many you do incentivizes players to stay there longer instead of restarting every 10 minutes. I feel like long, challenging endless missions is a great thing about Warframe and it should be rewarding to do.

[DeMonkey 32,880]

4 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

Please consider having the Kuva amount scale with time in mission or the amount of kuva siphons completed. As it stands there is no reason to run it as an "endless" mission or a reason to test our gear. It will just be more practical to stay for 10 min and leave to restart which goes against the big reason as to why so many of us want endless Kuva.

Perhaps an increase of 50 Kuva per life support?

[guytoune 64]

il y a 21 minutes, [DE]Sheldon a dit :

We hope to ship this as early as next week, but we of course welcome your constructive feedback and suggestions!

YES thanks DE

[Koldraxon-732 1,512]

Can multiple Kuva Harvesters be active simultaneously, and will life support capsules spawn faster due to a capsule successfully harvesting Kuva? 
Suggestions in the vein of this:

Spoiler

-After initial harvest success, subsequent harvests award more Kuva (50 on top of initial 200 per harvester).
-Kuva Guardians in the Fortress should drop a bottle of Kuva (50 as base, scales up with levels/harvests).
-Difficulty in Kuva Harvests should increase when a harvester has been completed successfully, and the current scaling of enemies should be slowed down.
-After initial harvest, Lotus gets worried and begins sending the capsules more often (up until rotation completion; each harvest will increase how often they spawn up to a 40% wait reduction).

 

Edited March 22, 2018 by Koldraxon-732
Some food for thought?

[Emulad0or 1,502]

22 minutes ago, [DE]Sheldon said:

*Please ignore the Clem transmission in place of new Lotus transmissions for completing a Kuva Harvester

 

NO! Let us keep Clem transmission pls 

[DrBorris 9,920]

Just now, DeMonkey said:

Perhaps an increase of 50 Kuva per life support?

That would be awesome

Spoiler

 

 

[Tritsteel 66]

Oh boy, desecrate Nekros is sooooo ready for this.

[HealingMind 88]

200 non-scaling kuva is pretty worthless, tbh. Even if it takes a minute to get the Kuva out, it would probably still be more worth it to do siphons, as it'll probably be faster than to do all the steps here.

[--Turtle-- 34]

22 minutes ago, [DE]Sheldon said:

 

*Please ignore the Clem transmission in place of new Lotus transmissions for completing a Kuva Harvester

 

Clem transmissions please 

[(XB1)INe Saninus 282]

1 minute ago, DrBorris said:

Please consider having the Kuva amount scale with time in mission or the amount of kuva siphons completed. As it stands there is no reason to run it as an "endless" mission or a reason to test our gear. It will just be more practical to stay for 10 min and leave to restart which goes against the big reason as to why so many of us want endless Kuva.

I agree with this. Give us a place to to really test ourselves.

If we invest the time and effort, reward us with a little additional Kuva each time.

If a team is communicating, min maxing, and playing well: they should get more kuva.

It should be equal to a Flood at the appropriate Flood level. (Level 80?)

After that it should exceed a Flood.

If a team invests an hour into a survival, they should be honored for that time.

 

[Dark_Lugia 747]

Since the time between the spawn of the life supports increase over time it would be nice for the kuva endless to get a scaling amount of kuva and/or make it a fix time between the tower spawns

Edited March 22, 2018 by Dark_Lugia

[(PS4)ArchangelX3Z 105]

Phenomenal as is, let's go :D

 

I will say however, scaling kuva rewards coupled with maybe a 10 level increase in base enemy level and increased diffciulty would be nice, I wanna have to try and survive :).

 

P.S. Commit...you know what I'm talking about 

Edited March 22, 2018 by (PS4)ArchangelX3Z

[Troll_Logic 4,554]

200!   AWESOME!!!!  

Now that completely random burn of 3,500 kuva is nothing now!

 

Geez DE.  

[(PS4)Boomstickman98 628]

4 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

Perhaps an increase of 50 Kuva per life support?

That could definitely work.

[(PS4)NatK98 1,016]

Endless Kuva looks great. I have one request though.
Please think about scaling kuva the further you go. It just simply won't be worth it otherwise. Keep up the great work

Edited March 22, 2018 by (PS4)NatK98